"Oh don`t be so ridiculous!" panted Barnaby, flapping like a penguin. "You can`t possibly do it".

　　Elizabeth fixed him with an offended glare. "Why not? I jumped onto a moving train".

　　"Aye", said Aelgren, "that`s exactly the same thing - if you dinnae include the high winds and the drop of certain doom".

　　"Right", said Elizabeth, suddenly not liking the idea quite as much.

　　Izzario was watching her from the other end of the tunnel. "You don`t have to do this", he called.

　　"And I`m not arguing with you either", Elizabeth heatedly yelled.

　　Luella threw her a pained expression, Elizabeth lip-reading the words over the deafening rage of gunfire: "Be careful".

　　Elizabeth extinguished the light in her hand and with Aelgren`s help crawled out onto the thin ledge of the observatory. Once in place she grabbed hold of the rope and tried extremely hard not to think about what she was doing. The temptation to look down was irresistible. It was as all-consuming as the need to breathe. She wrestled against it, lost, and had a dizzying urge to be sick. Everything was so far away! The rest of Caranthis was a miniature, zoomed out, mixed-up, model-sized world.

　　"Okay, bad mistake", she whispered, as her belly gurgleslurped like it had reached the end of a milkshake. "Don`t do that again".

　　Given the circumstances, looking up was definitely better. The balcony didn`t seem that far away and the grappling hook was perfectly wedged between the merlons of a small stone wall.

　　"It`s only a short climb", she said quietly to herself.

　　Elizabeth closed her eyes, gave the rope a pull and squealed as a gust of wind tested her composure, turning her hair into a jumble of weeds.

　　Shoving all thought to the back of her mind, she re-opened her eyes, gave the rope another tug for luck . . . and began to climb.

　　The first couple of metres seemed to last forever, as if her arms and legs had forgotten how to move. After that things just became agonisingly slow, the whole universe receding to the next point in front of her nose.

　　"I can do this", she said, doggedly. "I can do it. I can do it".This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

　　She fought for every scrap and fibre, climbing by the sheer force of willpower alone. One hand at a time. With a lunging heart through each savage breath of wind.

　　"I can do it. I can do it!"

　　Elizabeth was a trembling bag of nerves by the time she reached the balcony, snatching hold of the wall as though it was a life raft sent to pluck her from treacherous seas.

　　When a flash went off in the alarm centre of her brain.

　　Where was the rope?

　　The hook was falling, tumbling groundward . . .

　　Guts lurched. Instincts fired. Fingers strained and clutched at stone. And for a head-spinning, life-stopping, death-defying moment she was no longer about to go plummeting to the ground, but dangling like a monkey, right there.

　　There was no way that she was ever letting go of the wall now, and when Elizabeth finally hauled herself over the top it took almost as much effort to stop herself screaming to bits with joy.

　　"Okay", she gasped, hugging herself and scooping down thick gulps of oxygen and trying to pull herself together while stopping her chest from wanting to explode. "All I need to do now is get inside . . . work out where the hatch is . . . open it and let the others up as fast as I can . . . And I have no idea why I`m still talking to myself . . . Which is a bit odd . . . So I think I`ll stop".

　　The balcony curved around a heavily weathered door next to a leaded window shrouded by floor-length, red velvet curtains.

　　Prickles of fear hinted at what might be behind them.

　　With quivering hands Elizabeth took hold of the iron ring handle, carefully turned it and pulled.

　　Silently, the door came open.

　　The room on the other side looked like a grand private office. A row of imposing bookcases filled the entire space to her left, and on the right was a large mahogany desk with papers that were neatly arranged. An ornate brass lamp released a luminous orange glow, just bright enough for her to see the paintings on the walls. Pale-skinned people draped in silver chains peered down at her. The purple crystals around their necks were just like the ones that had been worn by the Eternal Sisters and Elizabeth shivered as she remembered the flash of the lightning and their terrified cries of WITCH!`

　　She fought to ignore the niggling thought that perhaps they could be right.

　　Elizabeth closed the door to the balcony and tried to get her bearings, tracing an imaginary line across the floor to where the connecting hatch should be. A giant arrow pointed to the centre of the room and the rug that was made from the fur of a snow-white bear.

　　She headed for it as swiftly as she could, ears primed for any possible sign of noise.

　　And there, beneath the rug, was the hatch. She heaved the rest of the bear aside to take a closer look . . . then froze at the unexpected sound of a firm, deliberate bump.

　　It seemed to have come from the adjoining room, and when Elizabeth heard the voices she instinctively knew that she only had seconds to spare.

　　Open the hatch or hide?

　　Several million brain cells weighed up all the risks and possibilities before delivering a clear message to the stomach region as to what they thought she should do. Elizabeth`s gut reaction was to disappear as quickly as possible.

　　But how?

　　She looked frantically for somewhere, anywhere that might be safe.

　　The only option was the balcony.

　　Flopping the bear rug back into place, Elizabeth dashed full pelt towards the door.

　　But it was already too late.

　　Someone, or something, was on its way into the room . . .